In Tencent vs. Qihoo Supreme Court case, which do the people support?

A Supreme Court hearing between two web titans, Qihoo 360 and Tencent, began this morning in China, marking the next round of the three-year-old battle between the web giants. Qihoo (NYSE:QIHU) is appealing an earlier decision by a lower court that ruled Tencent (HKG:0700) did not abuse its dominant market position to hurt Qihoo’s business.

Which do the people support? A poll answered by more than 14,000 people as of press time on Sina Tech shows overwhelming support for Qihoo. 69 percent voted in favor of Qihoo, 81 percent said Tencent abused its monopoly position, and 61 percent said monopolistic behavior has intensified unfair competition over the last three years.

Another less popular poll on Techweb showed a much more level playing field, however. Out of about 800 respondents, Qihoo only led Tencent by 22 votes.

What are they fighting about, again?

Back in 2010, Qihoo sued Tencent under China’s antitrust law for abusing its monopolistic position.

The “Q3 Wars,” as Chinese netizens have dubbed it, began when Tencent released an anti-virus program similar to Qihoo’s. Qihoo makes the most popular antivirus software in the country. In response, Qihoo’s software started blocking some aspects of Tencent’s QQ services.

After some heated confrontation, Tencent started forcing users of any QQ products, including the popular MSN Messenger-like QQ Messenger, to uninstall any of Qihoo’s software if they wanted to use Tencent’s software. Eventually both restored compatibility and apologized to users, but the real litigation had yet to begin.

Tencent sued Qihoo first for unfair competition and won, but Qihoo countered with the antitrust lawsuit that is now in the supreme court. The lower court ruled that Tencent had sufficient competition in the relevant market and therefore did not have a dominant market position to abuse. The lawsuit has thus far completely backfired on Qihoo, ordering the company to pay a fine and post a public apology. The court dismissed all of Qihoo’s claims, which it is now appealing.

Qihoo is asking for RMB 150 million ($24.6 million) in damages and a public apology.

If you can read Chinese, check out this comprehensive website by Sina Tech monitoring the case.

(Editing by Steven Millward)